


Reunion

by Thorinsmut



Category: The Martian (2015)
Genre: Complete, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One-Shot, Past Starvation, Recovery, Shower Sex, Touch-Starved, chosen family, or Martiney, somebody had to launch the good ship Watinez
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 02:26:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4943158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thorinsmut/pseuds/Thorinsmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark was soaping for a second time – well past regulation length for a shower, but he figured he had some shower time built up – when he felt the air motion and heard the squeak of the shower door open. He smiled as another body joined his, squished together in the little shower cubicle.</p><p>"Jesus, Watney..." Rick murmured, fingertips skating across Mark's protruding ribs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

Space did things to people. Being shut up in a small space with just the few same people – some of the rules of social order became paramount. Personal responsibility, everyone taking care of their own messes, was crucial. Looking out for each other, being able to admit when you were feeling fragile and being gentle with anyone who needed it, were skills they absolutely needed. Other social rules broke down entirely. New ones were written to take their place.

"Alone time must be respected" and "Don't bring up topics of conversation that always lead to serious arguments" and "Whatever keeps you sane keeps you sane: don't judge what someone else needs".

Maybe the most important new rules were "It is impolite to notice or acknowledge who is having sex with who" and "What happens in space stays in space".

They were a tiny bubble of humanity on the _Hermes_. Alex Vogel and Rick Martinez had wives on Earth, and Commander Lewis had her husband, but that was a different world entirely from the tiny capsule shooting through the big empty of space. The lines between friend, lover and coworker lost meaning. Nominal sexual orientation hadn't seemed to mean much either. Skin was skin, and touch was touch.

And he hadn't been touched in far too long.

Mark was pulled in, by these people who'd come back for him, and he could see it. All of it. How they were exactly the same as when he'd lost them, and how their relationships had changed and deepened without him.

Faces. Faces around him, human faces smiling at him, and Mark almost could not bear to see them. To touch them. These people who loved him enough to double the time before they got to go home, just so he had a chance to. Who loved him enough to hold him when he reeked of his own rotting body. He could see ( _see, on their faces, expressions_ ) their joy to see him, almost as much as his to be back among them.

The reunion couldn't last. The crew had damaged the _Hermes_ to get to him and needed to assess it, and Rick had to go pilot a bit to make sure they made their slingshot back home.

_Home. Earth. He was going home._

Mark managed to catch Rick's sleeve, just a tiny pinch of it before Rick left, but he saw in the way Rick's eyes crinkled into a smile, the way Rick turned just a little toward him, that he'd been noticed.

"Is there anything to eat?" Mark asked. He'd tried not to complain anywhere but his own personal logs about the starvation, but he could barely think of anything but _food_ these last few months.

"Yes," he was told. "Yes of course, let's get you some." Beck and Johanssen led him to the kitchen, and he could see the way their bodies spoke to each other. Tenderness and wanting to be close to each other.

Maybe, for them, what happened in space didn't always have to stay in space.

They made him a smoothie, a big fruit smoothie with extra peanut butter. They hadn't forgotten him, while he was gone away and alone. Hadn't forgotten his favorites. It was thick and sweet and rich and Mark dug in with a spoon while Beck checked his heart and lungs with a stethoscope. He'd gotten banged up bad, getting off Mars, but Beck promised him that his ribs weren't broken. He just had a lot of bruised cartilage. Good dependable body, looking after him even after all he'd put it through.

Mark only got about a third of the smoothie down before he had to quit. Before his stomach couldn't fit any more. He wanted it, desperately. He wanted to eat and eat and never stop. He held a spoonful of melting smoothie in front of his face and _tried_ , but his stomach threatened to hurl if he so much as opened his mouth for it.

He'd gotten too used to being alone. He didn't even realize he was whining, that little pain noises were crawling out of his throat, until Johanssen was shaking him by the shoulder.

"It's ok," she said, taking the spoon and the rest of the smoothie out of his hands. And it was nearly all Mark could do not to grab them back from her. Hoard it all for his. "It's ok, I'll put it in the freezer for you. You can have more after you shower."

Mark nodded and went to the shower. At least this part of the ship was still intact. He could hear Commander Lewis going over numbers, deciding whether they could afford the air to re-pressurize the rest of the ship. Whether they could risk depending on just the outer airlock. If they did or didn't, it was still more space than Mark was used to in the rover. And much less space than he was used to all alone on Mars.

Beck took Mark's clothes to be decontaminated, or maybe just plain destroyed, and Mark eagerly stepped into the shower. A working shower, after so long. Mark moaned as the warm water sluiced over his body, washing the sharp grit of Mars out of his pores. There was soap in the shower already, a little caddy with 'Watney' in Rick's handwriting. There were bits and pieces from everyone's kit. Everyone had contributed to supply him with what he needed. He soaped himself all over with the bodywash, worked it through his hair and into every centimeter of his skin. Bending over to get his feet and legs was interesting with his bruised ribs, but he managed it. It stung on the sores that had cropped up all over his body, from the rubbing of his suit and being unable to clean himself, but it felt too good to want it to stop. Mark rinsed it off, washed himself clean, and brushed his teeth with the toothbrush and toothpaste that had been provided. He finally got his teeth clean again, after so long unable to. His gums bled, red in the foam when he spit, but it was worth it to wash away the heavy stickiness he'd been unable to keep from accumulating on his teeth.

Mark was soaping for a second time – well past regulation length for a shower, but he figured he had some shower time built up – when he felt the air motion and heard the squeak of the shower door open. He smiled as another body joined his, squished together in the little shower cubicle.

"Jesus, Watney..." Rick murmured, fingertips skating across Mark's protruding ribs. Mark turned his face into the shower, washing the soap from his face. He knew starvation hadn't been kind to him, but he couldn't stand the worry in Rick's face as he looked his body over.

"Figured the least I could do was try and slim down if you were going to keep cramming into the shower with me. It wasn't built for two," Mark teased.

"I'd rather use up your shower time than mine," Rick teased right back. Everything was as right and easy as it had always been between them. But Rick's hands were everywhere, and Mark didn't know how to deal with that anymore. He could close his eyes and touch himself and pretend there was anyone else on the entire fucking planet, but it wasn't the same as having someone else really there. His entire body was shaking, his throat whimpering again.

"You're alright," Rick whispered, far too honest and far too much what Mark needed. His fingertips were on the back of Mark's neck, pulling his head forward to rest against Rick's. Safe, like nothing else existed but their two bodies together, nothing but Rick's warm brown eyes looking into his. "We've got you now, man. I've got you."

Mark's hands finally found their way to Rick's body, short and solid to hold onto. An anchor, for all he could be so reckless. His brown skin was smooth and resilient beneath Mark's hands, so different from his own beige skin gone gray and cracked with malnutrition. But Rick was touching him anyway, gentle over the sores and bruises that covered him, but touching him. All of his body, so he was known and held. So every part of him knew he was back among people, where he belonged.

"That's it... yeah..." Rick encouraged, smiling at him, and it was the most natural thing in the world to fit his mouth to Rick's. To kiss lips that were full and soft, to taste that particular flavor that was Rick's mouth. To feel Rick's laughter as a huff of breath through his nose and a shaking in his body – always laughing, Rick – and open to Rick's tongue pushing back into his mouth.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you," Mark confessed, too honest. _What happens in space stays in space_ , but he couldn't stop. "About this. Us. If you ever felt... if it _means_ anything?"

Rick broke him off with another kiss, warm and deep. "We'll figure it out," he promised. It wasn't a refusal, a denial that there _could_ be anything, and that was more than Mark could have hoped for. He kissed Rick, held him, touched him with the warm water and steam all around them. His cock stirred, how it hadn't in months, rising to rut against Rick's hip.

"Hey, alive after all..." Rick teased, he arched against Mark, body undulating smoothly against him.

"Told you you could raise it from the dead," Mark told him. But that was too much, shadows in Rick's deep brown eyes. Mark kissed him again to distract them both from how close Mark had been to dying too many times. Rick's hand circled Mark's cock, squeezed it tight, and Mark sucked on air, gasping like Rick's hand had taken all the oxygen out of the room. Rick laughed as he stroked Mark off. It took an embarrassingly short time. Mark clung to Rick's solid frame as his body twisted and shook and his cock pulsed in the few short spasm's of orgasm.

Mark's legs gave out on him in the wake of it, gone noodle-limp as his head swam. Rick laughed and slung Mark's arm over his shoulders to support him out of the shower. There were fresh towels and clean clothes waiting out there, and Rick helped pat Mark's papery-fragile skin dry. There was lotion too, to keep him from drying out, medicated to help him heal. Rick's hands were sure and gentle, spreading the lotion into his skin. Mark managed to lotion his own chest and arms, but was otherwise pretty useless for anything but just sitting there. The amount of _rest_ he needed after even gentle activity was thrown into stark contrast with Rick's health and energy.

"I expected we'd get to the lotion at least before I got you off..." Rick teased as he rubbed the lotion into Mark's spent cock and balls.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on a hair trigger," Mark laughed back. "Don't worry, I'll be back to full force soon."

Rick's breath caught slightly, eyes darkening with desire at the promise he'd know Mark intended. Some of their best were somewhere in the intersection between sex and wrestling and zero-g gymnastics, hot and sweaty and exhausting and so much damn _fun_. Just as soon as he got well again.

"You'd better be." Rick finished rubbing lotion into Mark's feet and handed him a set of clean clothes. _Clean clothes_. "Anyway. Lewis was making you a turkey dinner kit in the kitchen, if you're hungry again."

"No potatoes," Mark begged as he put on a shirt that hung on his hollow frame. At least the pants had a belt.

"No potatoes," Rick promised. "Yams and turkey and stuffing and gravy... Let's go." He held his hand out to Mark, and Mark's fit in his. Easy and simple, the two of them together.

Space was dangerous, and they were a long way from Earth. Maybe the _Hermes_ would lose all her atmosphere, or they'd burn up on reentry to Earth's atmosphere. There were a million ways to die in space, but at least Mark was _here_. He was with the crew, all of them waiting to eat a meal with him despite all the other important work that needed done. They were here for him.

Whatever they were facing next, he was facing it together with them.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this little ficlet. I really enjoyed Mark Watney and Rick Martinez' chemistry in the movie, so I just had to write an extension of the reunion!


End file.
